When Syaoran ruled the Earth
by Uakari
Summary: Birthday fic for Bottan!  Separated from Syaoran and Mokona, Kurogane and Fay find themselves surrounded by "dragons"...who neither breathe fire nor fly, but they're DRAGONS, OKAY?


**A/N: Happy late birthday, Bottan! Sorry I can't do anything in a reasonable time frame :P BUT IT HAS DINOSAURS! For everyone else, this is just goof...so enjoy, but don't look too hard for...you know...a _plot_ or anything XD**

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><p>The best thing Fay can say about this world is that it's hot. The worst thing he could say would require a substantially larger supply of expletives than he currently has the energy to dredge up, tired as he is from gathering the scattered remains of their gear from the gigantic…puddlepond/lake/_thing_ they've found themselves unceremoniously dumped into. It would be easier if there weren't a stream emptying itself into the pond from fifty feet overhead and stirring up the water; as pretty as the waterfall might have been under different circumstances, it's making it nigh on impossible to catch the ridiculously expensive, scaled ten-inch model ULTRA-ROBO-TRON™ (complete with fully mobile appendages and automated KARATE-CHOP action) that he'd spent so much time convincing Kurogane was worth three days worth of their wages the last time they'd been in Piffle as it bobs and twists in the current. Kurogane has collected the vast majority of their belongings and stomped his way to the shore, grumbling under his breath about _Manjuu-stew_, and is already in the process of wringing out some of their larger pieces of clothing as Fay scrambles about, trying to collect the stragglers.

Syaoran and Mokona are-

Well, he doesn't have a clue in hell just _where_ Syaoran and Mokona are, truth be told, only that they can't be _that_ far off or the grumbled curses and death threats Kurogane is spewing would be a lot harder to understand. This was all horribly disorienting; they'd been in the middle of packing only moments before – well, maybe "packing" wasn't the right word. It had _started_ as packing, at any rate. And _maybe_ he'd happened upon a little "something" Kurogane had stashed away for a rainy day. And _maybe_ it had been raining. And _maybe_ they had gotten a little carried away, but he's fairly sure they deserved more warning than the muffled shout of, "Time's up, Kuro-grunt!" just before they found themselves summarily lifted off the dresser and dumped into this next world.

At least constrictive clothing weighting them down in the water isn't a concern…

He finally manages to snatch the bobbing robot (just before it slips under the falling water, thank whatever-deity-might-be-handy) and makes his way to the shore where Kurogane is finally stripping away the T-shirt that's been clinging to him since he hauled himself out of the water – the _only_ thing that's been clinging to him, Fay notes with a wicked grin and wonders where the shorts that had been practically hanging from the other man's knees only moments before have gone. He finds them sagging, strung across a vine not too far from where Kurogane is now quietly emitting a quiet cloud of steam and disgust, but his attention is quickly diverted to the footprints littering the ground in front of him. Some are big enough to fit of their party in (were all four of them present and accounted for), but the vast majority are smaller – two-toed, three-toed, some seemingly all footpad with no appendages whatsoever. It's…_creepy_ – there don't seem to be any animals actually _in_ the vicinity, and what's more, he doesn't even hear the squawking of birds that usually welcome them into a new world. He toes at one of the larger prints and scrunches his nose up, "What do you suppose these are, Kuro-tan?"

"Dragons," Kurogane grunts without too much thought and slaps his T-shirt over the make-shift clothesline. "Goddamned manjuu…"

"What, all of them?" Fay scoffs and kicks the border of the massive, dusty dent in front of him, "That's quite the variety of dragons…"

Kurogane shoots him a very patient look before giving up and rolling his eyes. "There are many kinds of dragons," he says, "You can tell by the way the toes dig in more than the heels. It's characteristic – different."

"Different from what?"

"From-" he glares and gives the vine a good _thwang_, sending droplets of water flying to splatter or Fay's head, "Whatever, just give me your shirt."

Fay peels the clinging material away from him and tosses it at Kurogane. "Shouldn't we be looking for Syaoran and Mokona rather than setting up camp?" He tips his head back toward the sky, "Looks like it'll be getting dark soon."

The sneer that meets him when he looks back toward Kurogane is all the answer he really needs for the time being, but for once the irritable ninja decides to cast off his stoic demeanor and use his words for a change, "Fuck 'em."

* * *

><p>The beast is heavy over Kurogane's shoulder as he stomps back into the camp. He has no idea what it is – it's not a breed of dragon he's ever seen before – only that it was stupid enough to approach him while he was scouting the area and too slow to dodge his blade. It's just as well – none of the vegetation here is familiar and they've already spent the better part of the evening arguing over what may or may not be poisonous. Now that he's actually checked out the better part of the periphery and still hasn't found anything edible, a slab of roasted dragon sounds even more enticing.<p>

The _look_ Fay shoots him as he swings the carcass to the ground is enough to make his blood boil - _he _ought to be the one wearing that look. The idiot has done…_something_, somehow; the air around their makeshift camp is easily ten degrees cooler than the surrounding sauna he's just been wading through and the curling rock wall Fay is sprawled against pulses and throbs with a familiar blue energy etched into its many cracks and crevices. He mirror's the wizard's look at shoots it right back at him. "What did you _do_?"

"I thought I would be the one to ask that," Fay mumbles, one corner of his lips creeping ever higher onto his face. "Although I suppose it's blatantly obvious what you've done…" he trails off as he leans forward to inspect the dragon carcass more closely, "What is this thing?"

Kurogane huffs in exasperation. "It's a _dragon_," he insists, then remembers the more pressing matter at hand and flails an arm out at the wall, "What is this?"

Fay grins and waves this away, backing steadily away from the "dragon" as he does. "It's just a cooling spell, Kuro-rinta," he assures him, "It's the reverse of what we used in Celes for heating. It's only _resting_ on the walls – it's not going to break them or anything," he pauses, thumbing his chin thoughtfully, "And this way Mokona will have something to track us by."

"Clever," Kurogane has to admit, even though it pains him somewhat. He knows, logically, that they'll have to meet up with the kid and the insufferable manjuu at some point if they ever want to leave this world together, and though he's enjoying his quiet respite at the moment, he knows he'll miss the troublesome duo eventually (or at least the _kid_, he's not ready to admit any real attachment to the creampuff at the moment…). "Now get up and help me gut this thing so we can have dinner, will you?"

Fay's face, which had relaxed considerably with the wizard's extolling of his own inventiveness, immediately shrinks back into its earlier configuration of disgust, his nose and eyebrows apparently making a break for his hairline and his chin tucking so far back into his throat that it chokes his words. "You're…" he manages weakly, "You're gonna _eat_ it?"

Kurogane balks. Of _course_ he's going to eat it, what does the moron think he killed it for? _Fun?_ He hasn't killed anything for fun in god only knows how long…why would he start now? And moreover, why would he drag it all the way back to camp? He stares for a moment, mute in his disbelief, before sputtering out, "Of course we're going to eat it! Now get up and help me!"

Fay shrinks back into the glowing rock wall, his fingers flexing into awkward positions as they creep up his chest. "I'm not eating that," he announces in a nasal voice, "It's just a baby, Kuro-tan!"

Kurogane huffs and folds his arms over his chest. "It's not a _baby_," he insists, "And even if it was, you eat veal, so what's the problem?"

"I don't have to see veal before I eat it!" Fay whines and folds his own arms across his chest, "Look how big its eyes are!"

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"It's classic paedomorphism, Kuro-chan!" Fay says sternly, "_Classic_."

"What the-" _What the hell did that even mean, anyway?_ "Are you calling me a child molester?"

All the disgust melts from Fay's face as he collapses to the ground, laughing.

"_What?"_ Kurogane barks, obviously lost to whatever joke the idiot is making – _again_.

"Nothing, nothing," Fay assures him between bouts of cackling, "It's just..._ahahaha_…"

"Whatever." Kurogane grabs the _fully adult_ dragon by its hind legs and drags it away from the idiot's camp. Fay can take his chances with the exotic and probably deadly fruit – _he's_ going to be dining on roasted dragon tonight, come hell or high water. It would have just been all that much easier with the moron's assistance…

* * *

><p>It's easy enough to remake the fire in the same pit the following morning – he'd let it burn itself out rather than dousing it before falling asleep – and so the only real trouble Kurogane has cooking breakfast is breaking off a bit of the left-over, frozen carcass to heat over the flames. Even he's surprised that the damned thing is still frozen – it's been almost two hours since he'd woken to find the camp submerged beneath almost an inch of <em>snow<em> (quickly _melting_ snow, but snow nonetheless). The blue etches in the rock wall behind them still pulse wildly and he _knows_ something has gone awry with the damned "cooling spell," but so far he's been completely unable to wake the wizard up to get him to reverse the stupid thing (which is probably alright – it's surely nothing new, and if it hadn't been for Fay's incessant sleep-clinging and his unseasonably warm sleeping robe, Kurogane very well may have woken up frostbitten and possibly dead rather than only mildly pissed off).

In the end, he decides to tie what's left of the limbs together with some of the vines and suspend the entire thing from a branch overhanging the fire. It's a bit of a chore to get the vine slung up and around the branch, high as it is above his head, but it's nothing he hasn't already proven himself capable of this morning. He grins and looks back to Fay, still sleeping peacefully several meters away from the camp. He looks kind of…_pretty_, like that, Kurogane decides with a silent chuckle and turns back to the fire.

And he's going to _eat_ his goddamned breakfast this morning, too.

* * *

><p>His face feels full. This isn't usually a good sign, and Fay snaps himself out of the remainder of his sleep stupor quite quickly to figure out <em>why<em>. He flails his arms up to touch his cheeks and fails spectacularly in this, but somehow manages to make his entire body swing in a wide arc…

It's at this point he realizes that he's suspended about a meter off the ground; his arms and legs and wrists and ankles have been bound into a ridiculously intricate harness that lifts his hips at a ninety-degree angle and bends his knees to rest along the backsides of his thighs. He's almost thankful that his arms have been tied into the harness, as that's the only thing keeping the rest of his torso from slumping forward into the dusty ground. The harness itself appears to be constructed of vines, and he's fairly certain that only someone with a disturbingly thorough knowledge of rope bondage could have concocted something this elaborate out of forest litter. He's also fairly certain that that particular someone is seated only a few meters away, staring intently at a lump of baby dragon roasting over an overly-large flame (_compensating again_), and seemingly oblivious to Fay's newly conscious state. It's just as well, he quickly decides; the harness digs into _just_ the right places and the roasting dragon actually smells _good_, despite its wide eyes and otherwise child-like features.

There's a quiet chittering at his side, and he wrenches the sling to twist toward it. He's surprised – to say the least – to find himself face to face with a bird (though the title doesn't really fit – it's a meter tall and its beak is practically nonexistent – and it's definitely the _strangest_ bird he's ever seen). Its feathers are spiky around its head, and ripple with surprise as the bird realizes that Fay is _looking back at it_. It cocks its head to the side and creeps forward, darting around Fay's suspended form and shoving its muzzle into all of the places that it doesn't belong. Fay laughs (the feathers _tickle_, dammit!) and swings himself to meet the creature face to face once again.

"So curious," he chuckles. The bird stares wide-eyed back at him. "And intent," he adds as an afterthought and leans his face in closer, "You remind me of a very dear friend." The bird has nothing to say to this, but chirps and makes a spirited lunge at Fay's nose. Fay wrenches his face back in time to avoid losing his sense of smell and quickly wriggles his fingers, sending a long stream of runes floating around and pinching against the thing's mouth. A perfect muzzle. "A bit more violent, though…"

"What are you doing?" Kurogane's voice comes from behind him, "Get out of here! SCRAM!"

Fay can feel the air from Kurogane's swipes at the bird rocketing over his shoulders, and he spins himself quickly around to face him with a frown. "Don't scare Syaoran away!"

Kurogane's face falls spectacularly at this. "Oh god, you named it."

Fay pouts his bottom lip and looks up with his best wounded expression. "But he's so _cute_, Kuro-rin! And I miss our son _soooo much_…"

The way Kurogane's hand smashes his nose flat into his face screams _"It's only been one day!"_ far better than any note of exasperation coloring his voice could have. "Whatever," he growls around his palm, "I made breakfast. Eat."

Fay stares at the chunk of roasted baby dragon being thrust at him on the end of a stick for a moment before nodding his head toward the unfazed bird at his side. "I think Syaoran is hungrier than I am-"

"Will you stop this nonsense-"

"Just a taste!" Fay insists and tries his best to make his eyes sparkle, "Then I promise I'll eat some."

Kurogane squints skeptically at him for a long moment before relenting and leaning in toward the bird. He exhales loudly, waving at the glowing ribbon of…stuff surrounding "Syaoran's" mouth "He's got a…_thing_ on him."

"Oh yes. That's so he doesn't bite."

Kurogane groans at this, but extends the stick out toward the bird, who clucks and bobs and weaves curiously at the offering. Kurogane looks about ready to pull the entire thing back and stuff it into Fay's face where it _belongs_, when the creature finally darts its head forward and plucks the meat away. It shuffles suspiciously back into the nearby high grass before tossing its head back – surprisingly gracefully for what follows – and proceeding to wolf and hack down the morsel without much thought to chewing.

"That's a good boy, Syaoran!" Fay cooes from his sling.

"That's _disgusting_."

"Ah, Kuro-chi," Fay chides him, twisting to nuzzle his face against a bicep, "It just means it was delicious. And I'm _hungry_."

"Really?" Kurogane raises an eyebrow, clearly not ready to take this at face value. The dramatic growling of Fay's stomach is all he needs to be convinced, however, and he stamps back over to the fire to procure another hunk of meat.

Fay swings himself back around to face "Syaoran" once again, who is now determinedly setting into the grass, apparently readying himself for a nap. He cocks his head at Fay as their eyes meet, jaws opening to reveal long, pointed teeth that Fay had somehow missed earlier and head eeking forward once again… A ghosting of blue energy across his face is all that's required to convince him to lay down completely and snap his mouth shut for good. He still continues to stare however.

"You are the strangest bird I have ever seen, Syaoran," Fay chuckles to himself, "You need a Sakura-bird to keep you company-"

"I don't think it's a bird," Kurogane's voice sounds from behind him, "Could be a dragon."

"Dragons don't have feathers, Kuro-it-all," Fay insists. Still…he casts a wayward glance at "Syaoran" – there's something not-quite-bird-like about him. His complaining stomach decides it isn't important for the moment, though, and he turns back to Kurogane, opening his mouth wide and batting his eyelashes.

"_Tche_," Kurogane smirks, "Don't you want to come down from there to eat?"

Fay considers this for a moment, _hmming_ and _hawing_ and twisting his face into a ridiculous corkscrew to demonstrate the full gravity of this decision. "Naw," he says at last, "Kuro-tan put such effort into making it a work of art and to be quite honest, the knots around my back are pressing into some really sore muscles in all the right ways…"

There's an obvious conflict working its way across Kurogane's face – probably over whether he should be smiling or cursing, Fay quickly decides with a grin – and in the end he manages to quash all external twitches of emotion and thrusts the chunk of roast at Fay's face. Fay hums happily and stretches his neck as far as it will go to get a bite. It's more difficult than he had imagined, swallowing with his head at this angle, but he manages alright and looks up, thoughtfully, at Kurogane before going in for another. "Tastes like chicken."

"Hah?"

"_Chicken_," Fay repeats, and helps himself to another mouthful, continuing to talk even with his cheeks expanding, "Although, I suppose everything kind of tastes like chicken. Don't you think?"

He wants to laugh at the angry stream of Nihongo that comes rushing back at him, but it's very difficult with a mouth full of roast dragon, and besides which, he's too busy wondering just where the hell Syaoran and Mokona have gotten off to this time…

* * *

><p>It's much hotter again as the afternoon sinks into the evening, and not only because he's removed the cooling spell from the rock wall (despite all the good it had been doing defending their camp from the blistering mid-day heat, it had been nearly impossible to get this across to Kurogane with only hand gestures when the ninja's underwear was still hanging, frozen, on a vine too close to the wall). He really ought to have considered the strength of the sun here, even if he had been hanging in the shade of the tree for the most part… Now his red striped skin (it's a lovely pattern, <em>really<em>, and a testament to Kurogane's more delicate artistic sensibilities) throbs with a dull burn in all the wrong places and all he wants to do is crawl into a hole where it's and cool and dark and let the mud soak into his pores to soothe away the growing sting…

He supposes this isn't particularly _bad_, however, even if it is _warmer_ sitting in Kurogane's lap while the ninja slathers green, opalescent paste over his skin and looks at him like he's an idiot. Kurogane had dug the bottle – still mostly frozen – from their bag earlier that afternoon and had spent a good few hours encouraging it to melt (shaking, massaging, and ultimately screaming it at it while the sun did its magic). It's warm and sticky rather than cool and silky as Fay remembers it being when he bought it, but it's nice enough and calms away some of the burn, even it does nothing for the heat. Kurogane is being extraordinarily gentle as well, and the light scrape of his calloused fingers up Fay's arms is dredging even more heated blood up to boil just below the surface of his skin. He knows exactly what he's doing as well, if the smirk replacing the disapproving frump across his face is anything to judge by, though Fay supposes it would be kind of difficult to miss his steadily growing erection pressing into the ninja's belly.

Kurogane is talking – long, drawn out sentences with no chance of being understood. Earlier Fay would have sworn it was chastising, though he seems to have moved into a more mellow grumbling at the moment. He's doing this on purpose too – the teasing bastard – Fay kicks himself mentally for ever relating that he sounded sexy without Mokona translating (he isn't sure why – Kurogane's voice is still the same, but the tumbling of unfamiliar syllables over the ninja's tongue and the low, rumbling cadence he falls into so easily a lot more for him than speech normally would or really should). It's too damned hot for this – his hair is sticking to his back and his cheeks are _burning_…why does he pick now of all times to start trilling away like a music box when he's spent the entire day in near silence?

The hand snaking up his side, lightly ghosting the abominable green goo across the over-heated skin there, answers that question as well as anything could as it makes a break for the un-burnt flesh his belly, digging the tips of its fingers in much more firmly here and dragging up and across his chest. Kurogane lets them linger in the crevice of his collar bones and shoulder for a moment before grinning wildly and tangling them into the sopping roots of his hair, yanking Fay forward into a kiss that is much rougher than the treatment he's been lavishing on him thus far. It's _definitely_ too hot for this, and Fay bites at Kurogane's bottom lip in retaliation, but loses interest in fighting just as soon as Kurogane's hand slides back down his torso to grip them both firmly. Kurogane is as hard as he is (and probably just as covered in the aloe goo, if Fay's being honest) and so he relents, letting his forehead slide down along the flushed skin of Kurogane's cheek and settle into the crook of the ninja's neck. He scrapes his teeth along the tendon there as Kurogane strokes them both and continues to mumble nonsense into his ear. There's a hand groping at his ass, shoving his hips roughly into the same relentless rhythm of Kurogane's grip; every slippery stroke sends a shockwave up his spine and fire to his skin, each muted nonsense syllable mumbled against his ear lobe sets every hair on end and everything is so _good_, so long as he doesn't have to move…

The mumbling stops as Kurogane comes with a short, jerking gasp and everything is _so unfair_ as the pressure around his cock slackens in response that he nips at Kurogane's neck in retaliation and _whines_. Kurogane chuckles (_snorts_, really, but he'll admit to snorting sometime after hell has frozen over for his admission of chuckling) and grips him again, the breathy words starting their slow assault on Fay's eardrum once again-

"-grilled to perfection with a side of roasted asparagus, 5.99. Filet of pike with blackened crust, served over a bed of roasted walnuts and watercress, 8.99. Chicken with marmalade-"

Fay's jaw drops as the words start to make sense (horrible, _horrible_ sense) again, but he can already feel his thighs shaking and his back tensing and it's all he can do to bury his face deeper into the sweat coating Kurogane's shoulder as he comes. "Oh _god, yes_-"

"_Hah_," Kurogane pauses, his breath hitching in the back of his throat, "You made sense just then."

"Mmm," Fay breathes and strokes a hand across Kurogane's chest, "One of us had to."

"Shut up."

He leans back to study Kurogane's face with a teasing smirk. "Was that take-out menu from that diner in Piffle?"

"_Shut up."_

"It was!" he laughs and leans in for a kiss, "But why?"

"_Tche_," Kurogane glares back at him, "I don't have a million things to talk about. And you…"

"Evil," Fay chides with a small kiss to the tip of his nose, "Pure evil."

"Got the job done-"

Their attention is quickly diverted to rustling in the bushes. Kurogane's hand flies instinctively out to the side, parting the thick curtain of weeds and branches to reveal a very confused (or possibly just very curious) bird staring back at them, its head cocked to the side and feathers rustling with consternation. Kurogane immediately drops the curtain on it and shakes his head.

"I told you 'Syaoran' was a good name for him, Kuro-sama."

* * *

><p>It's much harder to sleep tonight with no relief from the heat, but Kurogane will be damned if he's going to let that mage freeze all of their gear again with his stupid spell. They've settled for a…a <em>beacon<em> of sorts, he supposes – it's small and casts enough light to take the place of a campfire and it's (_hopefully_) enough of a guide to lead Mokona back in their direction. They'll head off to look for the wayward duo in the morning; tonight is peaceful enough that they can get some rest beforehand.

"That one right there is Snarlak the Effervescent," Fay says, pointing up at the sky. His hair is tangled across Kurogane's chest, digging into his arm pits and twisting around his neck in an almost comical fashion, but Kurogane is too tired and too comfortable to actually move him into a different position. Besides which, he'd probably just clobber Kurogane in the face every time he reached up to point out a different ridiculous constellation if he were at anything but the right angle he's laying at now.

"Bullshit," Kurogane huffs and lifts his own hand up to point at the sky, "That's part of the great dragon of the east. And that," he gestures dramatically, "Is the tortoise guardian."

"You made that up."

"You make _everything_ up."

"I do not. That one there is Kuro-wanwan the Grumpass Puppy."

"I'll give you a grumpass puppy," he growls and rolls to tackle the idiot wizard into the dirt. He knows he'll catch hell in teasing for this later on, but, at the moment, nipping into the flesh of his neck and growling and snuffling like a hound is too much fun to resist, especially with the way Fay writhes and kicks beneath him-

"Woah there, Kuro-puu!"

That voice is far too high pitched to be Fay's, and Kurogane turns to sneer at their on-looker. He's sure it's a runty, annoying, manjuu-shaped rabbit-thing and he's going to give it a piece of his goddamned mind-

He falls back to the ground seconds later as gigantic, razor-sharp teeth splay open in front of his face and a roar made entirely of the most foul-smelling wind he's ever experienced barrels out between them.

"I SAID WOAH, KURO-PUU!"

The teeth are suddenly gone, replaced instead by a disgruntled looking dragon with what appears to be a bridle made of vine tied around its head. "What the hell…?"

"Kuro-puu is very grumpy!" Kurogane has only seconds to prepare himself for the assault of full-frontal Mokona that slings itself down from the reins on the beast to land on his face. "He was really hard to tame!"

The dragon _smirks_ back at Kurogane, who scowls back at Mokona. "You can't tame dragons-"

"It's not a dragon," Syaoran's voice says in the darkness. He's barely visible in the darkness, scrambling down from "Kuro-puu's" back and lights a torch as soon as his feet meet the ground. "They dinosaurs – giant lizards that most worlds haven't seen in millions of years."

"They're _dragons_."

As if to prove the kids point, "Kuro-puu" decides to growl and whine loudly in a way that Kurogane has never heard a dragon manage. His lips pulls into a sneer, "Maybe you should take the ropes off that thing, kid."

"Huh? Oh, no," Syaoran shines the torch at the beast's feet. There's a much smaller dragon (or maybe _not_ dragon) skittering around the things ankles, nipping and biting as it went, and making a general nuisance of itself. "He seems to have an, um, admirer…"

"That's 'Fay!" Mokona announces proudly.

_Goddamn it._

"See Kuro-tan," Fay's hand is weaseling its way about his torso, "Naming them wasn't such a bad thing. Look how cute I am!"

Kurogane runs a hand across his eyes. _Morons_. He's surrounded by morons. _Again_. And yet… "Come on," he claps a hand on Syaoran's shoulder. Even if he's not going to say it, he's glad to have found them again. "Let's get you two settled in for the night. We can figure out what to do with these-" he waves an arm at "Kuro-puu" and "Fay," who have apparently decided to stop arguing for the night and are busily settling down at the side of the camp, close to where Syaoran had earlier made a nest for himself, "_Things_ in the morning."

_And hopefully they won't be eaten by them during the night._

(ノ`Д´)ノ ┻┻


End file.
